


Hopper's Axiom

by UrbanAmazon



Category: Predators (2010)
Genre: Gen, Isabelle and Royce adapt, Post-Canon, Scars, canon-typical asshole levels, canon-typical harsh language, just a dash of humans being adaptable space orcs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28235694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanAmazon/pseuds/UrbanAmazon
Summary: “The most damaging phrase in any language is 'We've always done it this way'.” - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper.  Or, Isabelle and Royce aren't off the planet yet, but if the hunters really wanted their toys to fight fair, then maybe they shouldn’t keep collecting so many resourceful assholes.
Relationships: Isabelle/Royce (background)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Hopper's Axiom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seren_ccd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seren_ccd/gifts).



Oddly, it’s not the falling that wakes him. The claw of gravity at his stomach and lungs, the air ripping over his clothes, chilling his fingers and his face like winter - that’s the familiar bit. It’s the rising electronic beeps that shove him from grogginess into panic. He does not know that tone or that cadence, and it trips his brain into adrenaline-soaked overdrive: not pressure, not speed, not proximity, not his fucking alarm clock, what what _what shit shit shit_ \--

He only gets a glimpse of steely clouds in one direction and green in the other before the harness around his chest and shoulders gives one last squawk and bursts open, yanking him vaguely upright into a dazed moment of _oh, parachute_. It’s enough of a surprise that he’s still relaxed when he hits the ground at a slightly slower rate of speed, and doesn’t shatter both of his fucking knees. 

Still jolts him, though - tailbone to teeth. 

For a moment, all he can do is suck air into his winded lungs and watch the strange beige parachute sway and collapse down into the infinite wealth of green. Without the rush of air, the heat and humidity settle onto him like a weight, and the sudden all-over prickle of sweat threatens to make his vision sparkle. Underneath that, though, is only the distinct ache of a hard landing - nothing broken, nothing bleeding save for the bitten inside of his cheek. He still has the hug of his tactical vest around his ribs, his helmet on his skull, and the presence of one-two-three-four weapons on his person, as if he’d been on his standard patrol sixty seconds ago, then glanced up at a bright light and then-- 

… then?

… okay. Moment over. 

He rolls onto his side, spits blood, swings his combat shotgun forward into his hands and rises up into a crouch. Jungle. Equatorial-hot. There’s no smoke or ammonia-like scent of spent ammunition. No breeze, no distant chatter of fauna or firefight, but he still makes a slow circle of his surroundings as the hairs on the back of his neck stand further up. The radio in his ear is silent, not even white noise, but he can _feel_ it, like ripples in the fluid air around him, caused by another body. He forces his breath to slow, tenses his fingers in their gloves and prepares for the kick of the shotgun. All he needs is a target, a _flutter_ of a fucking leaf. 

"Stop,” rasps a voice… behind him? Male. American. The word is not a suggestion. 

He stops. The shotgun stays up.

The _crick_ of a hammer pulling back on a gun is whipcrack loud in the jungle’s thick air. Close, but not too close, not close enough to spin and knock away. He doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing. Very slowly, the shotgun is lowered to hang from his shoulder and he shows his empty hands.

“Turn around.” About six feet away, standing. A faint hiss to the whisper of it, like the pull of a scar, or the careful breath around a rib that had been broken more than once. 

He pivots slowly in his crouch, letting his thighs burn with the bunched anticipation of exploding into a charge, tackling this motherfucker and taking the gun away, demanding answers, where the _fuck was he_ \--

There’s nothing behind him. Ferns curl in unfamiliar fractals, trees stand with strange gray splotches on their bark, and the parachute sags, strings cut. There’s _nothing_ else, there’s--

Six feet away, the air shimmers and fries away, and that’s not real no fucking way that’s real. It’s a man but not a man, patchworked together like a fucking Frankenstein’s monster of recognizable gear and completely alien nightmare. The boots are human, military, and permanently stained that shade of shitty gray brown born of active duty. The pants are dark navy BDUs, but covered with a barbed diamond mesh. There’s skulls hanging alongside the thick leather belts, skulls that he could not fucking name if he tried. Tactical gloves, with the fingers gone and the knuckle shields scratched and brassy, with one hand aiming a perfectly normal pistol and the other resting comfortably on a bone-handled machete at the belt. Heavy gauntlets on either forearm, lashed in place with leather straps. More of that barbed diamond mesh across a bare chest, with a canvas tactical vest hanging open. 

The face… what the _fuck_ , the _face_ \--

With a hiss of pressurized air, the monster pulls off the flat, glowering metal of its face, and there’s a man beneath. A normal man with a sharp brow line and arched nose, with pitted scars burning their way up the left side of his face and that eye gone slightly cloudy. He’s… smiling, in that sort of way that people with many weapons and every possible way to use them sometimes smile. 

It’s a familiar sort of expression, and that's the only thing that gives him the confidence to set his jaw and snarl. “Either pull that trigger or point it somewhere else.”

The smile twitches. “Hm. British?” 

And because isn’t that just the fucking cherry on this nightmare, he twitches right back. “ _Welsh_.”

The mismatched eyes rove over him, lingering on the various weapons, the places on his uniform where badges should be, but aren’t. “That’s new. Got a name?”

“Evans. Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm the guy that landed here in that parachute nine seasons ago." Slowly, the hammer clicks safely back on the pistol, and it’s slid home into its holster. “Just wanted to be sure you didn’t waste the ammo, Evans. You're gonna need it." 

Evans lowers his hands. When nothing new is pointed his way, he gets to his feet. “Are you supposed to be the welcoming party?” he sneers, chest puffing despite the lingering aches of landing. “Who’re you with? What the actual fuck is going--”

“ _Shh_.” Again, not a suggestion, though the sound was little more than a whisper. “We’ve got a few hours of light left, and we need to get moving. Quiet.”

“And what happens if I don’t want to go with you?” Evans’ hand drifts over to the stock of his shotgun again, not lifting but definitely communicating the willingness to do so.

There’s a new sound, high, electronic, and alien, and it makes Evans’ stomach twitch like falling. The air sizzles again, but the corresponding shimmer of light un-warping is high, too high in his peripheral vision, at least four meters up a tree. It’s another monster, wearing her own patchwork of obvious military gear and alien accents on a human body; segmented armor plating in glossy black over her chest and down one arm, more barbed diamond mesh, and another mask with a broad forehead and a permanent scowl, but missing a chunk of the left side, sliced away diagonally. The bit of face below it is smooth, tanned, and human. Not smiling like the other one. A long, dark braid falls over her shoulder. 

The three red dots by the brow of her mask match the set that glow directly over Evan’s heart, and a metallic shape on her shoulder that has his instincts screaming _gun_.

“Then she’d have to shoot you back,” drawls the monster, “and that’ll just be a shame.”

There’s more of them, pulling away from the mottled patterns of the tree trunks and rising from the foliage at ground level. Smears of mud blot their skin and clothes with layers of brown-gray-green, though some of the layers are dried and flaky enough to show details beneath. Russian prison tattoos on the man at Evans’ two-o-clock, with a set of knives tucked up along his forearms. The shape of a short-sleeved police uniform on the man at Evans’ nine. A woman with arms like fucking _trees_ and a torso like a barrel rises up from behind an upended tree stump and casually lifts a sledgehammer over one shoulder… a sledgehammer with one side that had been somehow melted and warped into a point. No masks, and no mesh, but they’re all fixing Evans with the same look of suspicion that borders on hostility. 

Given the way they all hang back as the first woman slides easily down a vine, though, they are not in charge. Even the first monster circles around Evans to take a place at the woman’s right, on his blind side. His hand is still resting on that machete. Evans has yet to see him _blink_. 

The woman under the mask has a thread of a scar running from beside her chin up to her cheekbone, exactly opposite the missing slice of the mask, and another mark burning a thin furrow above her brow and into her hairline. The glossy black armor looks like dragon scales, or maybe some kind of fucked-up bug; Evans’ skin crawls trying to find a familiar pattern in its sculpted arcs. Her dark eyes pin Evans in place, despite the head and shoulders of height he has on her. She glares like a commander, or maybe a sniper. 

“Evans?” she asks, like weighing a new gun in her hand, making sure the feel sticks. Her voice is also pitched so softly Evans has to consciously hold his breath to hear her. “What were you, Evans? SAS?”

It’s hard to not feel the accusatory weight and accompanying regret in the past tense, and the immediate wonder of how she could _tell_. Evans swallows, wets his lips, but she cuts him off. “I don’t give any particular shits about what you were doing before this place. We don’t have time to have a problem with that, and neither do you.” 

When Evans nods, she looks faintly pleased. “Isabelle,” she says, and “Royce,” inclining her head toward her compatriot. 

Evans _just_ catches another twitch in Royce’s expression, this time unamused; Isabelle continues before he can voice anything. 

“There’s hunters out there, Evans. They’re not like us.” She says ‘us’, and… shit, that’s a different word now, isn’t it? “Every season, they try something new. Sometimes they use different weapons. Sometimes they drop in different prey.” She taps the black armor on her arm, and Royce’s scarred eye twitches at the sound. “But they like us best. There’s always at least one human in the new meat. This season, it looks like you’re that one.” 

“Except they keep fucking up with the things they _don’t_ change,” whispers Royce, with a weaponized smile that is fucking eerie. “There’s three of them that wouldn’t know teamwork if it cut their head off… and I don’t know how you are with math, but there’s more than one of you.”

Isabelle takes another step forward, crowding into Evans’ space despite the head and shoulders he towers over her. Evans is pretty sure she hasn’t blinked, either. “This is your squadron, now, and if you _fuck_ with us, you fuck your only chance at living past sunset.” She lets that sink in. “Is that in any way unclear, Evans?”

Evans thought his reaction to that level, unflinching tone had rusted over years ago, but apparently fucking _not_. He stands up straighter, but catches himself before yanking his eyes up to some point above Isabelle’s head. “No,” he mutters tightly.

Royce’s fingers tighten around the bone-handled machete. It… looks a lot like an arm bone, with the ball of the shoulder joint polished smooth and clean.

“... no _sir_.”

“We are a little over seven klicks from our camp, and we are the only living things in that distance you will find to be even remotely friendly. Royce takes point. If you're with us, then you will say nothing. You will touch nothing. If you try to shoot any of us, I will blow off your leg and leave you as bait for the things that put you in that parachute and want your skull on their wall. Is that understood, soldier?”

Patchworked gear or not, Isabelle is so obviously military it makes Evans’ spine itch. “Yessir.”

“Then move out.” Perhaps Isabelle smiles, but the mask is back on and covering most of her face before Evans can be sure. She reaches down to tap a button on her--

“ _Motherofgod_! ” Evans yells, and jolts back. That is a _hand_. That is a _severed fucking hand_ lashed to her belt like a fucking purse, and it’s not even human. It’s _huge_ , and clawed, and oddly textured like an alligator, or a fucking _dragon_. It’s got one of those forearm gauntlets on it, too, and lights and buttons flicker in a pattern Evans couldn’t name if he had a gun to his head. 

_Of course,_ he thinks hysterically, _that thing looks far too big to wear on her arm. Much easier this way--_

“Evans.” Royce is suddenly right there beside him, with a hand on Evans’ shoulder to steady him and squeeze warningly. “Shut up.”

Then his helmet is back on, and he strides past Evans without looking back. Isabelle is--

\--gone. There’s a flicker like dry heat in the air, and then nothing. The rest of the gang take a step back, take two, and then Evans’ eyes sting with sweat, and he blinks, and there’s nothing. Nothing at all. 

Evans’ skin still prickles, but there’s only the parachute in the ferns and grass surrounding. For a moment, the jungle feels less like some forgotten corner of Nicaragua or Columbia, and more like a shelled city street, with crumbling buildings all around him to hide snipers, or rockets, or… or-- 

As Royce’s shadow starts to blend into the trees, Evans lets the shotgun hang from his shoulder and pulls his A2 rifle up instead to take up a support position, and follows.

**Author's Note:**

> (See, this is what happens when you let Isabelle play Scout Leader, Royce.)
> 
> I also love this movie. In fact, I am a pretty big nerd for the whole franchise (hence the handful of references to the other movies I've dropped in there), and do wish we'd seen more of the adventures of Isabelle and Royce, their combined badassery, and how their humanity (however repressed in Royce's case) could continue to save each other's asses (like it's supposed to). Happy Yuletide!


End file.
